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By Root 1156 0

that did. It just showed you; the joke was supposed to be on him for Christ’s sake. It too had infantile origins. Even as a little boy, John had been so impressed by the J. P.’s and P. T.’s and F. D. R.’s by which the Big Wheels were designated in newspapers, that he took to initialing his baby cousin, both in his private conversations with her, and in his references to her with others, simply because this made him feel that he actually was hitting it off with some hot shot—tycoon to tycoon. He confessed this one day to his father, quite matter-of-factly, almost proudly, and Big John, who had always got a lot of simple-minded pleasure from the tiny monster he’d produced, when he was able to stop laughing and pick himself up off the floor, told it at once around the family. In no time it became the family joke. Only John never saw anything funny about it. Nor was he in the least abashed by its constant retelling. Nor, dammit, did he ever stop initialing me.

“Why John, what on earth are you doing here?” I asked him finally. And actually I was quite curious to know. The last time I’d been trapped by him, I’d been let in on what he really thought of hitherto responsible American Youth high-tailing it out of the States first chance they got, wasting their time bumming around Europe. He thought it was darned disheartening. Where were we going to get our key-thinking elite from anyway? He thought they ought to be forming the core of our key-thinking elite. He thought they should be solving the vital postwar social and economic problems of the Civic Community, not leaving it in the hands of people without the benefit of the fine up-to-date basic training the American University was now offering its students in its contemporary curriculums. That was what he thought.

His brow puckered earnestly at my question. “I had a helluva wrestle with my soul, S. J., to see if I should take this trip,” he confessed frankly, “but I finally decided that the Rag really did need some decent on-the-spot reporting of just how Uncle Sam is letting all his good gray taxpayers’ money be spent over here.” That was what he’d decided.

Good old John Roger (the Roger was for our mutual uncle, the really rich one), I swear I don’t know where he got it all from. His father, except for his overdeveloped sense of humor, was a terrific guy. He ran a newspaper in St. Louis, and as part of his tireless practical joking (or maybe just to get young John off his neck), had bought him, upon graduation, a tiny toy newspaper in Wichita to play with. I am sure its daily editorials kept Big John floor-bound and howling, but John junior, as is the case with so many of our great men, had no sense of humor at all, and the Wichita Wrangle, or whatever it was called, gave him a Mission along with his folie de grandeur.

“Course,” he went on, not giving us an inch more space to breathe in up there against the door, “I wouldn’t have dreamed of coming if this important Conference weren’t getting under way. I know darned well I haven’t given myself very long in these three weeks to cover it—not anything commensurate with its importance—but it’s all I’m going to be able to spare. Hell …” he let out a sharp little staccato bark to warn me of the approaching joke, “… somebody’s got to mind the store back home.” You could see his mind suddenly four thousand miles away, worrying over some vital, burning domestic issue—like the contraceptives that had been turning up recently in the bomb-proof shelters of that five-block area.…

“Anyhoo,” he shook himself and honored us again with his complete presence, “anyhoo, when we went for briefing last week at a meeting of the Soil Erosion Committee of the ACFEA.…”

“The what?”

John was always very patient with me.

“The Agricultural Commission for European Aid has been meeting for the past two weeks right here under your very nose, for heaven’s sake, S. J.,” he explained to me, not unkindly, “and the problems of Kansas as you know being mainly agricultural, naturally my Rag’s main interest is going to be focused on the developments of this